Occasionally I’d play music in the background while playing the game. Now on this fine day, I’ve played ‘The Plagues’ from the prince of Egypt. I have a certain two brothers on my team. One of them being my main, Kaeya. “This seems too familiar,” I said aloud. In SAGAU, what would their reactions be?

plagued

a/n: voidless, words cannot describe the jealousy i feel knowing you are a diluc haver. also, i had kinda a hard time with this one, so let me know if this isn’t what you wanted!

word count: ~2k (the song itself is abt. 300)

-> warnings: major spoilers for kaeya and diluc lore, biblical references (quotes from the song are used, which itself is an interpretation of the bible), the brothers think you’re the ‘lord’ being referenced, heavy angst, this got so sad so quickly—

-> lowercase intended!

< masterlist >

taglist: @samarill || @thenyxsky

i don’t think it would register the first 10 seconds or so. they might be interested from the haunted whispers, or wonder how your device managed to capture a choir. they would pause on ‘this saith the lord’ but would get over it quickly. naturally, they would assume it was referring to you, and everything after carries a bit more weight. what if it was a command of yours?

‘Since you refuse to free my people

All through the land of Egypt’

they’d be curious about where ‘egypt’ was, and whether or not you lived there. why were the people captured? were they prisoners of war? they knew how deadly a fight between gods could be- was your world in the midst of war?

‘I send a pestilence and plague

Into your house, into your bed

Into your streams, into your streets

Into your drink, into your bread’

all of a sudden very worried. they’re gonna assume the worst case scenario and worry that you’re suffering through a plague. diluc’s making plans to offer more food the next time he has dinner at the manor, and kaeya’s concerned you might get sick from the poisoned food. they don’t have the most advanced medicine, and certainly not medicine fit for a god.

‘Upon your cattle, on your sheep

Upon your oxen in your field

Into your dreams, into your sleep

Until you break, until you yield’

this will give them pause, if only until they think it over. cattle? ‘oxen’? how could your world be so advanced as to have a device to peer into theirs and yet rely on these animals? they quickly get ahold of it though, don’t worry: naturally, your device was a holy item, only to be used by you, a god. it made sense that the people you ruled over would rely on cows and sheep to live. but then.. was this song one of warning? warning whoever the other party was of your divine retribution?

it makes more sense to diluc than it does kaeya.

’I send the swarm, I send the horde

Thus saith the Lord’

this only cements in their minds that it’s a song of warning. your people there must call you their lord—it made sense, perhaps they should adopt it?—and you were threatening to send a swarm of… something. they hoped they would never have to know. the haunting beauty of the chant is not something they’re keen on ever experiencing.

‘Once I called you brother

Once I thought the chance to make you laugh

Was all I ever wanted’

this hurts.

badly.

horribly, an ache immediately burning their chests. the tired, saddened voice of the brother will echo inside of kaeya’s head, likely long past whenever the song ends, and diluc’s tripping—literally, if you’re mid-battle his model will freeze in place for a few moments—over the realization that this is a hymn meant for brothers.

they refuse to meet each others eyes, each focused on the task you’ve given them. the other members of your party look away, giving them space even if they’re not the type to usually do so. i ask that you leave the brothers off-field, as they’ll surely be delayed in following your commands and will likely get hurt because of it.

’I send the thunder from the sky

I send the fire raining down’

the eerie enactment of your voice suddenly carries so much more weight. in your world, at some point, two brothers had fought over ‘egypt’, and you had sent down plagues in punishment. surely you knew this, right? was this a warning to them? were you angry with them?

’And even now I wish that god had chose another

Serving as your foe on his behalf

Is the last thing that I wanted’

you can’t see it due to the camera being permanently set behind the character—provided he’s on the field—and diluc certainly can’t, since they’re facing away from each other, but kaeya’s eyes are quickly turning glassy. it hurts, the weight of his promise to khaenri’ah, to his father—to both of his fathers—manifesting as a hollow ache in his chest. it’s getting harder to breathe through the block in his throat, and he wonders if you’re intentionally playing this because of him. it wouldn’t be so surprising; he knows he’s not the best or the most devoted, he knows that you likely look down on his lying and secrecy, he knows, he does, but please don’t remind him of it. it already haunts him when he tries to sleep.

‘I send a hail of burning ice

On every field, on every town’

diluc has a better handle on his expressions—read: he’s better at suppressing them—but anybody who looked could see he was distressed. his jaw is tense, every muscle in his body taught. he didn’t move an inch when he was off-field, and he relied heavily on the binds of your device to move him on-field. he feels like a live wire, buzzing with energy and yet no way to vent it. he can’t cope with these feelings the same way he normally would, he can’t throw himself into paperwork or into battle. he can’t stomp through mondstat’s plains, he can’t call flame to his fingertips and burn out the pain. your presence, the heavy air of divinity around him, barely does anything to soothe the ache. if anything, it only burns brighter.

‘This was my home

All this pain and devastation

How it tortures me inside

All the innocent who suffer

From your stubbornness and pride’

oh.

it’s like the words were handcrafted, bent into a hook and cast on a line that swiftly caught kaeya’s soul. he tries to remind himself that it’s not about him, it’s not about diluc and it’s not about khaenri’ah and it’s not about crepus, it’s about some nation in your world called ‘egypt’-

he can’t. the words resonate with his very essence, the core of his being shaking alongside the swelling music and tragic melodies. he feels like a glass in the hand of an opera singer, quivering in place and unable to move an inch, just waiting for the right frequency to make him shatter.

as he chokes on his own air, he wonders why you played this song specifically. did you know how much it would rip him apart? did you realize how much it hurt, to see himself reflected in its lyrics? did you know that it would send him back to his youth, did you want him to relive that pain?

over the turmoil, he can hear your voice. “this seems too familiar..”

so you were aware.

he supposed he deserved it.

’I send the locusts on a wind

Such as the world has never seen

On every leaf, on every stalk

Until there's nothing left of green’

diluc also caught your little comment, and he might have laughed would it not have come out watery. of course you knew. of course you chose this song specifically. of course you put him on the team with your beloved, of course you made him work with his brother, the one you’ve poured the most of your time and effort into. of course. of course. this was all just a jab at him, wasn’t it? perhaps he was being a touch self-centered in that assessment, but really, it wasn’t that far-fetched. he knew his brother was your favorite. he knew that, despite his own feelings about him, your opinion stood higher than any other. no matter how hard he tried, he would always fall to second place.

it made sense that you wanted to remind him.

’I send my scourge, I send my sword

Thus saith the Lord

You who I called brother

Why must you call down another blow?’

cryo vision or not, kaeya’s skin is burning. his heart is thundering at twice the pace it should, his skin flushed with both blood and embarrassment. he couldn’t help but feel like you were directing this at him specifically, like you had picked this song specifically to get under his skin. he didn’t doubt that diluc was affected as well—time apart didn’t change either of their habits—but didn’t dare to look over. surely, if he saw how disheveled mondstat’s cavalry captain had become after a simple few verses, his words would once more line with fire and flame. he knew his brother resented his position as the one in your favor, but now, with this further context…

it feels like you only picked him to fix him.

‘I send my scourge, I send my sword

Let my people go

Thus saith the Lord

Thus saith the Lord’

dilucs mind is racing, trying to pick out the meaning behind the song. it’s a tale of two brothers, that’s obvious enough, and it’s clear you mean for a parallel to be found between those sung about and him and kaeya. maybe- maybe if he can find it, if he can find the message you want them to learn, he can act on it and maybe he could fix whatever you hated so much about their relationship. he wanted to, desperately, because surely there was a reason you chose to play this with them on your team. there had to be meaning in this, there had to be a reason you insisted on placing him besides his brother even when you made it clear which you favored, there had to be a way to fix whatever he did to anger you. he refused to believe otherwise.

‘You who I called brother

How could you have come to hate me so?

Is this what you wanted?’

no, no, it wasn’t, kaeya never meant for this wedge between them to drive so deep, the chasm that separated the two brothers was never meant to be deeper than his pinky was long. he wanted to reconcile, he wanted to reconnect, this was never what he wanted, he never meant to dissolve his relationship with his brother like this. there were days he spent at the bar, bottle in hand and filled with regret over his decisions, wishing for anything to fix it. he would never want this. but of course, as always, your omnipotent presence dared to accuse what mortal men could never speak.

‘I send the swarm, I send the horde

Then let my heart be hardened

And never mind how high the cost may grow

This will still be so’

diluc’s eyes close, his thoughts a swirling mix of the words he’s hearing and memories of stormy nights. memories of blood on his hands and the glinting light of a fatui insignia burn behind his eyes, the implications of your playing this song knowing that it resonated with the two of them lost in the chaos. his mind echoes words back at him, an apparition only there to eat at him. ‘never mind how high the cost may grow,’ it spits, taunting, and he doesn’t have the energy to retaliate. why would he? hes in no place to protest, not when it’s right.

’I will never let your people go

Thus saith the Lord

Thus saith the Lord

I will not-‘

they ask that you never play this song again.

‘Let your (my) people go’

haiii im wondering something abt ur dragonfruit fansnak!!! so how exactly does the journalist fight the snak in order to defeat and capture it ?? like for the mama melon you have to drop the stalactites on its head—does the player need to do anything like that to defeat ur fansnak?? c:

Hi! I’d actually been thinking about this but I didn’t have a solid idea. Loosely I considered playing off real life dragonflies’ talent for intercepting prey in midair. To introduce the boss encounter, Cromdo and Beff might initially be at a higher elevation while the journalist slid down into the pond to explore and Cromdo would be like Hey pal while you’re down there launchpad me one of those gold coins from the pile would you. You go and pick up a ‘coin’ from the pile and put it on your pad, but when you launch it, the dragon swoops down into the scene and intercepts it in midair (whereupon the ‘coins’ also reveals themselves to be bugsnax and skitter to life), and then the dragon flies down and returns the launched coin to the hoard. This could either be how you get the dragon to fly down low enough to hit a tripshot (while it’s returning something to its hoard), OR Cromdo would get the idea to launch bombs at it disguised as treasure. You would use the slingshot to splatter the bombs with cheese sauce to make them look more like ‘gold’ artifacts and then launch them, the dragon would catch them and get mildly exploded. If we went this bomb route, though, you’d probably have to intersperse launched bombs with ‘actual’ treasures / coin bugs, or else the dragon will learn quickly that you’re just damaging it and start avoiding all objects you launch instead. I was trying to think of a way you’d use the sauce slingshot in a boss battle – I feel like of all your gadgets that’s the most underutilized across those types of encounters. Even the buggy ball gets its spotlight with the DLC legendary. Maybe using chocolate sauce (since its coins are chocolate bugsnax) to lure it places as well. Well, essentially its capturable form only retains one of its original form’s wings. Over the course of the encounter, I imagined its other wings would fall off at some point – each time it loses a wing, its flight path and maybe behavior is altered, changing up the fight (ex., when it only has two wings left, maybe it begins to spin around hectically and breathe fire everywhere). Until it only has one and drops, unable to keep flying, and then you can net the poor thing. Thank you for the excuse to dump info about this by the way

m plannin on pullin for neuvi n his weapon :’))

ive alread farmed everything except for his boss mats n those starfish he needs but i licherally have everything else ready including exp books, mora, the pearls he needs + two diff artifact sets incase i wanna switch things around

i am gna be broke please pray for my wallet

_ 🦋 anon

PRAYING FOR UR WALLETTTTT

i kinda pre-farmed. i have the little crab drops smsjjshd and it’s enough for his talents too but i actually have like 0 talent books bc i wasted them all on lyney and then kinda gave up on farming them bc I NEEDED A FREAKINF ARTIFACT SET and i was getting the WORST artifacts ever like literally nonstop i was farming artifacts and JUST completed a build literally the other day. THE OTHER DAY !! like literally 3 days before his banner god graced me with a bomb circlet. so yeahhhh i need talent books but everything else i have more or less unless its not out yet like his boss and regional material.

i am not looking forward to finding those starfish things :,)

Project Max Ascension - Week 3

I’m a little late making this post because I was so tired from pushing around literally thousands of pounds of stuff back and forth at work that I just kinda fell asleep instead of going through my usual end of the day Genshin routine.

So now I’m two weeks behind where I should be on getting all the Weekly Boss drops I need to fully level Wanderer and Faruzan’s Talents. I was already a week behind because I foolishly left finishing the Archon Quest until the very last minute the week that Version 3.2 went live, and I just didn’t finish it before daily reset time.

Not a big deal in the grand scheme of things. It just means I have an extra couple weeks I need to spend fighting Shouki no Kami to get what I need. If HoYo follows their previous pattern of having two Weekly Bosses per region, then it’s highly likely that Sumeru will get another one and every new character will start using that boss’ materials.

Fortunately, after falling asleep last night I woke up just in time to prevent my resin from capping. I realized this when I did the math in my head, so I quickly logged in just to condense some of it before going back to sleep. Sure enough, I was at 157/160.

Anyway, now I can address the project itself. Much more substantial progress this week since I focused almost entirely on grinding bosses. I used a bit of resin at the end to make sure I had enough Talent Level-Up Materials for the Wanderer to get his next two levels. With this I’m a little more than halfway to all the materials I need from the Pyro and Cryo Regisvines. Once I’m done with them the rest will be much easier.

Most of the other materials I only need 20 or 40 of, so they’ll take a lot less time to grind for and I should be able to rapidly close in on the end of this project. I could be progressing a little faster by doing artifact runs like I used to during Project 888, simply for the extra Mora to reduce Ley Line grinding at the end. I mostly just don’t feel like doing them because they’re a huge pain, but it’s also becoming more difficult for me to invest that much time into Genshin Impact anyway.

And, since this project should be a cakewalk compared to my previous one, I also think that warrants taking things easy. Besides, the more Ley Lines I grind, the more progress I make towards that dumbass Bounty of the Earth achievement.

hi hi! it's me! the anon from yesterday with the rain and kitties (o´▽`o) i wanted try interacting with my favorite blogs more (and you're very welcoming) so here i go! i'm actually supposed to be playing genshin impact soon once my desk comes in and i wanted to know any recommendations or advice you might have. it all feels a bit confusing to me ehe.. (´ ▿ `|||) thank you if you do answer this and i send my love to you!

♡σ(•▿•σ)

hi!!! ahhh that makes me so happy to hear!! this blog is my little safe haven, so naturally i want others to feel comfortable here too also one of your favourite blogs?? having an inner meltdown >///<

hmm, i can definitely see why you’d find it confusing, it can be a bit much at first, which already brings me to my first tip:

don’t be shy to ask for adice

it might seem obvious but i didn’t and it made everything infinitely harder than it needed to be; because there are so many aspects of the game, it’s probably easier for both of us to ask more specific questions when they arise; sure, i could go into artifacts and farming and whatnot now but i think it’d complicate things further than it’d help; that being said

try to get a grasp on the game mechanics/ elemental reactions

again, this is what the game centres around, who wouldn’t… it’s me, i didn’t know and again it made everything way more difficult; i just windbladed the crap out of every enemy with the traveller and occasionally switched characters, which, again, not exactly ideal game play on my part

level/build your characters (and don’t neglect your supports)

you’d think that’d be a given as well but i was so thrifty with my materials that i was super under levelled and just wore every boss down with amber (yes i faced the final boss of the third region with my lvl 58 amber, what about it /lh)

so don’t hesitate to invest in your characters, be it levelling or talents or weapons; also give your supports some love or you’ll end up like me (we don’t believe in healing or shields on here)

consider checking out banner leaks

since gacha is the essential feature of the game, choosing which character to pull for can be a though decision, especially if you’re f2p or a low spender

what i personally do is looking at future banner leaks; while i don’t like spoiling the story for myself, there are plenty of leakers who can give pretty credible leaks for upcoming characters, although they should always be taken with a grain of salt (especially if they’re more than two updates away)

but if you don’t feel like spoiling yourself at all, that’s totally fine too, i just like planning ahead a little

again, i don’t want to overwhelm you before you even start playing but if you, or anyone else, ever have/ has any questions about the game at all, don’t hesitate to drop by my asks!! i can’t guarantee a great answer but i’ll definitely try <3

obey me cast + their genshin mains

i woke up at like three in the morning and scribbled this all down

not a formal writing piece so i haven’t formatted it like one, but i thought this was a fun idea!!

lucifer: diluc

they both have Fatherly Issues (in very different ways though)

probably inwardly makes fun of diluc for not liking wine

doesn’t really have any emotional attachment??? he just keeps diluc because he does a lot of damage and helps kill enemies quick

he actually has pretty good luck with getting 5 stars before he’s even hit pity, but he has awful luck on the event banners in terms of getting the featured 5 star - he’s never once won the 50/50 when he actually reaches it

gets really good artifact and weapon drops though so all of his levelled-up characters have super overpowered kits

he’s never actually looked up any recommended character builds, he’s just smart enough to figure out what all the stats mean and build his characters accordingly

has not touched his serenitea pot since he got it

not actually great with battle strategy and elemental reaction, he just tries to hit as hard as he can at all times

all of his characters are built dps because he doesn’t know how to build supports or healers

never teleports anywhere (he still hasn’t even unlocked half the waypoints)

didn’t realise the statues of seven healed until really late into the game

doesn’t bother with the reputation quests/bounties

all of his characters are still on that black glider that amber first gives you

it took him ages to finish the archon quest in mondstadt because he didn’t want to go into the cathedral

mammon: zhongli

accidentally got zhongli on like his very first event wish and has mained him ever since

he thinks it’s really funny that zhongli never has money (even though he also often has no money)

apart from that he likes the idea of playing the character that literally makes all the mora in teyvat

was actually considering switching after he finished the liyue archon quests because he absolutely hated how zhongli handled the whole thing but he didn’t want to give up that big pp damage

still doesn’t know that you can climb up onto dvalin in the stormterror battle

mixes and matches artifacts, but the ones he does use have really good stats and sub stats though so the lack of a set bonus doesn’t make much difference

didn’t realise you could increase talent levels until ar 50

loves doing the blossoms of wealth and hasn’t let his mora drop below 100k ever since he accidentally used it all up levelling his team to lv60

immediately does a wish as soon as he gets enough primos, unless it’s an event banner for a character he doesn’t like

he also ignores the story and hangout quests for the characters he doesn’t like

dabbles in the serenitea pot but doesn’t have the patience to really commit to it

forgets to do his commissions until the very last minute and lets his resin fill up to 160 before remembering that he’s not supposed to let it get full

is terrified of spiral abyss on a molecular level

levi: barbara

he loves idols so of course barbara is his favourite

has her built dps and does more vaporise damage with her charged attacks than some people’s 5 star bursts

ended up building lisa as a dps too because she makes fighting the oceanid for the cleansing hearts much easier

somehow still gets barbara to heal enormous chunks of hp as well??

has all three of her talents crowned, she’s lv90 and so is her 5 star weapon, plus all of her artifacts are +20

he likes getting the event 5 stars even if he’s never going to build them, they just make him feel superior in his luck

has really bad artifact drops which makes him really frustrated because he knows exactly how to build his characters with the perfect stats, he just can’t get the right artifacts!!!!!

keeps getting crit dmg, crit rate and atk% sub stats on defence circlets and it makes him die a little more on the inside each time

he despises jean because of how she makes barbara feel and desperately wants mihoyo to make a moment where jean tries to fight something but fails and barbara then steps in and takes it down immediately

never gets barbara’s constellations with makes him very upset because he wants c6 so BAD

nearly cried when he got barbara’s happy birthday voiceline

somehow got his serenitea pot to adeptal energy 20k within like two weeks but it doesn’t look good?? it’s just a whole bunch of 4 star furnishings shoved wherever there’s room

is pretty much always online at any given time

has nearly every single achievement in the game (goddammit just GIVE HIM THE RELIABLE HELPER COMMISSION)

satan: diona

this is not up for debate

he saw her in the character archive and immediately decided that if he didn’t get her he was quitting the game

luckily for him it was xiao’s banner around this time and he managed to get c3 diona from that alone

much like levi with barbara, he managed to build her so that she does enormous amounts of damage but still performs her shielding/healing really well

he prioritises her over everyone else but because of this diona is still his only fully-built character

all talents crowned, all artifacts +20, etc

hates draff with all his heart and refuses to buy anything from him

will murder you if you refer to diona as a loli in front of him

i’m aware keqing also sort of looks like she has cat ears but as far as i know that’s just her hair???

if anything i feel like satan wouldn’t like her because he’s offended that people think those chunk of hair look remotely like a cat’s cute lil ears

chose all his other team members based solely on whether or not their skill set would benefit diona

refuses to use any of the characters lucifer uses and got legitimately angry when he found out lucifer had started building diona to help with spiral abyss

spends like five minutes at a time making diona jump into water because he thinks the cannon ball animation is the cutest thing in the world

if a boss he’s fighting manages to kill diona, he gets so angry that he pretty much obliterates it immediately after

asmo: lisa

partially because she’s pretty and her personality is right up his alley, and partially out of pettiness because he sees so many people slandering her

doesn’t know how to build anyone, he’s only got a good lisa build out of sheer luck

none of his other characters have remotely good builds. like, maiden’s beloved on tartaglia?? really, asmo???

squealed when lisa called traveller a cutie

talks to her while he’s running about doing quests or battles

plays pretty sparingly so his ar is relatively low and he barely has any characters outside the starters

usually gets levi to one shot the bosses for him when he needs to ascend/upgrade the talents of his characters

(levi agrees because it gives him a pretty big power trip)

he also likes kaeya and has him in his team but lisa’s magic is just so pretty to him

spends all his primos on the standard banner trying to get lisa constellations but he still only has c4

all of the solo boss battles he’s won were only won out of sheer luck

adores the concept of the serenitea pot, but he doesn’t like a lot of the furnishings available

desperately wants a character customisation function

died seven times trying to do the stormterror fight and had to have levi do it for him in the end

still doesn’t done any of the story quests that you need a key for

spends most of his free time finding some pretty landscapes, changing the time, and taking pictures of lisa doing one of her idles against the sunset

beel: xiangling

decided he liked her as soon as he did her story quest

he’s only gotten up to floor 4 of spiral abyss because he only did floor 3 to get her

still only has c2 :((((

always has to have snacks with him while he’s gaming because xiangling’s voice lines remind him of how hungry he is

desperately wishes she was real because he wants to taste how good her food is for himself

likes cooking a bunch of dishes in-game, but he also gets frustrated because they all look so GOOD and he can’t eat them

doesn’t really know how building works but he does vaguely know what stats are good and how set bonuses work

doesn’t like hu tao because she’s mean to xiangling >:( plus belphie despises her and beel rarely likes anything his twin dislikes

is low-key upset that xiangling’s story quest was so early in the game because he didn’t appreciate it enough at the time and he hasn’t seeb her in-game for ages

still doesn’t have any 5 stars apart from the traveller, but he does have literally every 4 star in the game

is the type to bring xiangling to pyro domains but luckily she does some pretty good physical dmg as well so his teammates don’t get as mad

takes some time out of every day to find every food/ingredient vendor in the game and buy out their entire stock

still has never run out of mora somehow????

belphie: qiqi

i made this choice partially because of that one halloween belphie ur where he’s dressed up in a jiangshi costume

aside from that i feel like she just sends his big brother instincts haywire

he cried a little bit when he read her backstory, not gonna lie

like satan, he will kill you if you call qiqi a loli

somehow managed to build her as a physical dps that does like 5000 per hit?????

(he has unholy artifact luck and all of qiqi’s artis have atk, crit dmg and crit rate as their stats and sub-stats, plus aquila favonia)

he started out building her as an all-around dps but then he realised that her burst and skill couldn’t do much in terms of damage since they’re healing-oriented, so he decided to build her physical since that the only type of dmg she can constantly apply

and qiqi still heals reliably because her healing is scaled off her attack, which is like monstrously high???

qiqi hates hu tao so of course belphie does too

he still refuses to do her story quest and didn’t touch her banner or character trial

really really wants a qiqi banner for constellations but is aware that that is incredibly unlikely

doesn’t trust baizhu and wants zhongli to adopt qiqi since he seems like a much more reliable dad

heard the theory that xiao is the adeptus that killed qiqi and therefore also despises him even though it hasn’t even been concerned or anything

diavolo: eula

don’t get me wrong diavolo definitely gives me pyro vibes but i feel like he’d just feel so bad for how the mondstadters misunderstand and mistreat eula in her story quest that he’d immediately go to spend all his primos on wishing for her

he’s got r2 broken pines and a full pale flame artifact set with some pretty decent stats and substats on her so she does pretty enormous damage

it’s lucky that eula’s move set doesn’t require anything too strategic because all diavolo does is button mash

all of his characters are physical damage dealers because he doesn’t really know how to do elemental reactions

(because of this though he’s awful at fighting a lot of the bosses, especially the oceanid)

his favourite boss battle is the weekly golden house trounce domain because he can always smack childe down really quickly

he’s stinking rich so he can afford to spend just about as much money as he wants to get any character he wants

like he got all the way to pity on eula’s banner and lost the 50/50 to mona but he just bought more primos and got all the way to pity again to get eula

on the other hand he got broken pines twice in two ten rolls on the weapon banner and he wasn’t anywhere near pity for that

he joined levi along with satan and asmo to have a go at doing the golden house fight in co-op and he managed to pretty much oneshot a lv90 childe in phase 1 and phase 3 with just eula’s burst

(he spent phase 2 recharging it)

barbatos: venti

this is at least 70% because venti is also called barbatos

he somehow knows pretty much everything there is to know about building characters well and he’s built venti with both attack and elemental mastery

got venti on his first banner and managed to get to c4 on his rerun

doesn’t appreciate how much venti drinks and actively buys the non-alcoholic juices from angel’s share to give him as if that’ll help????

is terrified of fighting the wolf because it’s immune to anemo

(don’t ask how he managed to get the hurricane seeds for ascending venti)

can pretty much fire off venti’s burst as soon as it’s over because his energy recharge is somehow also insane

diligently collects all the recipes and masters every single one of them

his serenitea pot is literally so perfect looking????? i don’t know how to describe it everything just fits together flawlessly

diavolo offers to buy him primos because he’s got more than enough money but barbatos doesn’t wish a whole lot so he usually refuses

(diavolo knew he mained venti and liked him though so he bought him a bunch for the rerun anyway)

he still doesn’t have any five star weapons but stringless works really well on venti anyway so he doesn’t mind

doesn’t really like co-op, prefers to just wander around in his own world

simeon: yanfei

simeon definitely gives me hydro vibes and he probably mained a hydro before yanfei, but i feel like he happened to get her on zhongli’s banner and decided he really liked her as soon as he started trying her out

he adores her little ‘boom boom!’

she also works really well doing big damage with vaporise which is good because simeon plays a lot with luke, who mains barbara

he low key identifies with how yanfei doesn’t want to focus on her identity as an immortal half-adeptus because simeon himself often wants to forget the fact that he’s a divine being and just live peacefully

often forgets that yanfei gets a lot of her dmg from charged attacks and just keeps doing normal attack combos until he registers the scarlet seals and realises he needs to hold the button down

nearly all of his characters were basically backseat-built by levi and solomon

even though his team is pretty powerful he still dies a bunch because his battle strategy is just ‘stand there and keep hitting the attack button until it dies’

keeps running off of cliffs and forgetting to plunge/glide and just dying to fall damage

back when he was like ar20 he accidentally wandered into liyue early and immediately got killed by a treasure hoarder

spent like ten minutes of his first stormterror fight just running off the end of his platform before someone told him he was meant to glide

luke: barbara as well

if you’ve seen my post about barbara and luke being siblings you’ll understand why i’ve made this choice

aside from that luke just likes barbara because she’s one of the nicest characters in the game

plus she’s a deaconess in a church and he’s an angel so

unlike levi he’s got her built purely as a healer, but she heals so MUCH

luke’s entire team is just support characters?? but their support is so good that they kind of make each other dpses in their own right??

his strategy is to keep his whole team at full hp and deal relatively small but very steady increments of damage

unfortunately this means he isn’t great at the artifact and weapon/character enhancement domains because they’ve got time limits

wants to have a pretty serenitea pot but he just can’t get it to look how he wants it to

like levi, he doesn’t like jean because of how she makes barbara feel (and also how jean just refuses to take any sort of older sister role for her)

got her to c6 on a single event banner because she just kept coming home (he wasn’t complaining though)

is contemplating building her dps because he thinks it’d be cool if she did a bunch of damage like levi’s barbara

likes to just sit and wait for her to do her dancing idle because he thinks it’s cute (will immediately make her move and cut off the other one though because it’s about jean and he doesn’t like her)

solomon: albedo

they both look sensible but they’re both just mad scientists on the inside

doesn’t really know how albedo’s burst and skill work, just keeps tapping buttons whenever they’re available

if he didn’t have albedo he’d probably main a catalyst but he relates to how curious albedo is about just about everything

(plus he does like his design)

always gets the limited time 5 star on his first ten pull on the event banners????? is he using his magic somehow??????

and also somehow gets really good weapons and artifacts????

he knows enough about artifacts to know what to put on who so all of his characters are really well built

he’s the type with eight lv90 5-stars with lv90 5-star weapons and fully upgraded artifact sets in his character showcase

his signature is ‘hack me i dare you’

constantly getting friend requests from fellow players who want an op friend to help them in domains and against bosses

but unfortunately even if solomon has a bunch of overpowered characters he is very bad at using them

gets all the elemental reactions wrong, uses the wrong element against the wrong enemy, forgets to do things like putting albedo’s skill down before his ult, and he can’t aim with any of the archers

like i said he just taps buttons and hopes for the best

because of this he’s still at floor 6 in spiral abyss

Bro the Xiao rerun isn't even confirmed and yet here I am, getting ready to lvl 90 10/10/10 him the INSTANT he's home. I already prefarmed his artifacts (threw them on Anemo traveler for now, they get to enjoy them until my son comes home) and am now just waiting until after my exams so I can start going batshit with the talent drops and bosses.

Now the question remains- what weapon will my boy get, because I have no idea man

GHATHADFDS wish i had your commitment! i'm hellbent on getting xiao but i haven't done shit for him LOL (this is the same thing with albedo, hence why i still need like 7 geo cube drops :") )

- katheryne from liyue

Beg for me || Jurdan Dom-Sub One Shot

Jurdan Smut Week 2020   •   DAY 1

@jurdannet @jurdannetrevels

Rating: M

Summary: “I need you.” 

                  “Then say it. Beg for me.”

Masterlist   •   AO3

Thank you so much @slightlyrebelliouswriter23 for helping me betaing this, even when you’re sleep deprived, I have no words! 🧡

“Look at me, love”

Kneeled before him, Jude lifted her head slowly, her breath coming out in faltering huffs. A prickling sensation ran over her swollen lips. Surely a reaction to the punishing kisses he’d given her just seconds before. The moment their eyes connected, the intensity she saw there sent an anticipatory pulse down to her stomach.

“Do you know why I am doing this?” He said, cocking his head to the side and arms crossed over his chest. His words were low and honeyed. 

Oh she definitely did. Yet, she tugged her lip between her teeth.  

Arching an eyebrow he hauled the little chain that connected with the leather band around her neck, his movement soft but firm. Answer me, it said.

The corner of her lips quirked up a bit. The only sign of defiance she’d allow her body to show, or at least that’s what she tried. “Because I misbehaved… sir.” She quickly added at the change in his gaze.

He chuckled. “I might not be your boss at this moment, but I would appreciate it if you still minded your manners.” With another tug to the chain he signaled her to stand. “On the bed, dear.”

Heat creeped up her cheeks at the appreciative hum that left his mouth at the full sight of her. Black lace that barely covered part of her body, combined with high stockings framing her long legs. She’d bought it knowing he’d like it, but couldn’t get used to how much skin it showed. 

It was almost unfair that he could keep his clothes on. However, she couldn’t really decide if she liked her boss better when he was completely naked, or just like he looked in that moment: bare feet, black trousers and loose white shirt, sleeves rolled up his arms. More than ready to play with her for hours. 

The soft mattress sunk under her. Jude lay down, her pulse rose as he walked towards her. 

“Hands up.” He commanded. A familiar clang reached her ears from the drawer he was rummaging in, sending a shiver down her back.

She swallowed before obeying. He had plenty of punishments in his repertoire, but only few include that artifact in particular. That narrowed the options. 

Cold metal kissed her wrists and Jude gasped. With a small movement she felt the chain of the handcuffs firmly secured to the bed’s headboard. Her chest rose and fell with elaborated breaths.

She was officially at his mercy.

Turning her head back, she watched him loosen his tie and take it off. Popping the first buttons from his shirt open. His carefree movements, along with those mischievous eyes of his always took Jude off guard. 

“Enjoying the view?” He asked.

“You know I do, sir.”

“Hmm.” Her boss purred. “Too bad it has to end.” At that he gently coiled his tie around her head, covering her eyes. He tied it tightly to keep it from falling but not enough for it to hurt. 

Pulling away, he left her there, aroused and disoriented. Jude tried to sense where he’d gone. Focusing all she could on-

Jude yelped when something soft caressed her torso. A low chuckle came from the left. 

The thing about being sight-deprived was that her other senses intensified in a terrible yet exhilarating way. And he knew it very damn well.

Whatever object it was, probably a feather, he used it to roam over every piece of uncovered skin. He trailed it down her arms, her neck, between her shuddering breasts. Dropped kisses here and there, nibbling at her sensitive spots. The sensation was too much and yet not enough, Jude was quickly losing all coherent thoughts. Every time he sucked low moans escaped from her throat.

She breathed his name as his mouth moved down to her hips. He continued his ministrations, carefully avoiding that hot and needy spot between her legs. 

“Are you going to defy my decisions in front of my coworkers again?” 

Of course she would, they were both aware of that. Especially if it lent to more sessions of this. It was all part of their game. She was brilliant at work, with her intelligence and sharp temper she had everyone around her finger in no time. And he, a promising talent on the rise, did everything on his power to conquer her. Even when it implied hiding it from the whole company.  

It felt so good to quarrel in meetings. But it was better when he gave her that look, the one that signaled he would use that same argument against her later. Alone, and naked. 

Jude opened her mouth to answer but felt as if her mind had forgotten how to form words. Fuck, she should be doing better than this, she scolded herself. Focus.

He sucked down on her inner thigh, really close to where she desperately wanted him and she cried out, arching her back. The handcuffs rattled against the board. That damned sound always remained to haunt her in her deepest dreams.

Hot breath caressed her core as he spoke again. “I asked you a question.” 

She licked her lips. “No sir, I won’t.” He hummed, using his thumb to play with the lace of her panties and pulled them down just a fraction. Then he seemed to change his mind and dragged his hands up her sides earning a protest from her. 

Jude felt the mattress shift under his weight, then hot bare skin pressed flush against her as he stretched on top of her. He still wore his pants and even with them, his hardness was evident. She tilted her hips up seeking some friction, but a strong hand held her hips still. She whined one more time and his fingers now grabbed her with enough force to leave bruises.  

“What was that again?” His gruff voice was now against her ear. 

She moved to put her arms around his neck but a metallic sound and a yank to her wrists reminded Jude of her position. She almost said the word she knew he wanted. But held back, huffing in frustration. “I need you.” 

“Then say it.” He groaned, nipping her earlobe. The hand holding her down moved once more, soft fingers positioning on the edge of her underwear. Please, the word was there on the tip of her tongue. With a torturing pace, he slid them under the thin fabric. “Beg for me, Ember.”

“CUT! Excellent, I think we got it. Good work everyone!”

Voices burst around them. 

Jude sighed, the air wavering. Seconds later cold air hit her skin as he moved away from her. 

The tie was taken from her eyes and the bright light blinded her a moment. The handcuffs shackled again and were off a heartbeat later.

“Hey.” She turned to find Cardan, stripped down to only his trousers, with the offending artifact on his hand. “Are you okay?”

She blinked and sat up, taking in her surroundings. Filming set, not suite room. And Cardan, her co-star, not her boss. Sometimes she really envied Ember, her character. Getting the chance to live the excitement of a forbidden romance. A hot, forbidden romance. 

At her lack of answer, he sat next to her and cupped her face. Worry filled his voice. “Jude? Did I overstep?” 

“No, no.” Shaking her head, Jude grinned. “You were perfect, I’m just recovering my breath. I tried to put myself more into it this time.”

“I noticed,” Cardan chuckled. “If I’m honest, for a moment I almost forgot we were acting.”

Her heart skipped a beat at his words. Me too, she almost said. Instead she just looked at him. Even out of character there was something in his eyes that captured her in a way she didn’t believe was possible. He was kind, funny and incredibly respectful on and off of the set. 

Jude couldn’t help the real fluttering in her stomach in every scene they shot together. 

She knew romances weren’t unusual in their line of work, but since she was relatively new, this tv series her first leading role, she was still terrified to ruin it. Most of all, to ruin the friendship she’d built with Cardan in all those months. 

Coats were given to them, observations from the director and the screenwriters too and at last, they could leave for the day. 

Cardan walked her to her trailer, telling another of his weird experiences he’d had while filming. Tears fell from her eyes from all the laughing. 

“I trust  you’re laughing at the situation and not actually at me.” He teased.

“Oh I’m definitely laughing at you, no need to ask.” 

Making an offended sound he ruffled her hair, Jude shrieking and pulling away. 

“Jude,” He said, his tone more serious than before made her stop her mocking too. “Are you sure everything was okay with the scene?”

A blush covered her cheeks. “It was. You know I’m relatively new to this. I guess I’m just getting used to all of it.” 

He nodded. 

“But, thank you.” She added. “For making sure I’m ok, and...for all of your fun stories that make me relax after. It is...really nice from you.”

Cardan’s wide smile almost left her breathless again. 

“It’s nothing.” He hesitated for a second. “I have more stories though… We could... go buy some coffee and I could tell you all of it. If you want to, of course.”

She stared at him, not quite believing his words. 

He bit her lip and gave her an apologetic smile. “Think about it, will you? I’d really like to...go out with you someday.”

Jude smiled gradually, feeling her heart nearly jumping out from her chest. “I’ll think about it.” She said softly. 

“Let me know.” He walked backwards and winked at her. “And Jude… just for the record, I enjoy being tied up too.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Tags: @slightlyrebelliouswriter23​ @sweetlyvillainous​ @aesthetics-11​ @thesirenwashere​ @jurdanhell​ @nightbringer​ @b00kworm​ @mysweetvillain​ @thefolkofthefic​ @yafandomsdotnet​ @vanessa172003​ @tessas-herondales​

If you wish to be tagged/untagged (or if I forgot to tag you) please let me know!

Oh, you know what's weird? The fact everyone says Kazuha is support - unless C6.

Like, his kit is pretty great, damage wise. His elemental skill and burst are decent and you can do pretty insane combos. With swirl and multiple elemental reactions taking place at once, he does pretty commendable damage.

EM scaling really only benefits him if he is C6. So, if you want main/sub dps, build him with 300 ish EM from artifact subs and you get a 12% elemental damage bonus transfer from his passive. Which isn't bad to have in a general team setup.

Do people build Hu Tao as support because she has a support skill?? No way. Neither do you need to use Rosaria for her crit rate transfer. Heck, with godly artifacts, any unit can be dps. We've all seen the BARBRUH memes.

I run him dps as of now, I don't have an EM sword yet (here's hoping weekly bosses drop a billet). I'll test it out on the damage transfer too. But honestly? On anemo% att% cd% and level 90 jade cutter, he does at level 70 and lvl 4 talents pretty good damage. He's not a glass cannon like Xiao and Hu Tao or Eula, but he's definitely sub dps like Venti (who also has CC built in)

Not to mention, he's such fun to play with. He succs so good. Best vacuum boy! I've spun and yeeted so many Hilichurls today. I've been deliriously happy playing him.

but you know, if you think about his role,, he could really be a support since you gotta combine him with someone else to actually make most of his Q and E skill. and like you said, any character could be a DPS if you really make it intentional.

as i said before, i really like kazuha better than Xiao. I have Xiao and i barely used him bc i just dont like that hp depletion thing;;;; Kazuha almost does the same thing as Xiao with his E skill (at least, fundamentally), and he doesn't die from it;;;

Albedo's featured in the livestream so we'll probably be getting his rerun in 2.3 :D I just wonder if Albedo or Itto will be first. I'm hoping Albedo because I heard rumours that Xiao will be in the 2.4 update. If Albedo's first, I can skip Itto and save primogems for him.

I already farmed everything I need to fully ascend Albedo and enough books to get his talent level to 6. I need more gold books but I'm focusing on artifacts first and then more talent materials. When building characters, my plan for is ascension materials > filler artifact set > talent level to 6 > best artifact set > crown talents

I also planned out the build I want to Albedo. It'll be two pieces of the geo set and two pieces of the new artifact set and the stats will be centered around ATK/CRIT with DEF>CRIT>ATK substats. His skill and burst scales off different things. Since his new weapon gives DEF% and the upcoming artifact set gives you 30% DEF when you have two pieces, that will be enough for his flower that scales off DEF. I've been farming the geo set for the past three weeks and I only have one great artifact.

For Xiao, I have mostly everything I need. I have his ascension materials (I wish the geo boss dropped green shards more often). I farmed the viridescent domain so much for Kazuha that I can make six viridescent sets XD

genshin anon! tumblr you hoe don't eat my responses ): uhh not entirely sure where i stopped with 1 and started with 3 so. i think i was agreeing with zhongli sadly not being back for a while and rosaria being in soon. OH maybe i mentioned wanting albedo. i was doing all their story quests and his was so interesting and i want him. i want everyone eventually but ill only try real hard on the ones i really want. and floor 7 of the spiral abyss is awful ): maybe thats what i said in part 2 lol.

lmaoo ok ok well here’s the other 3 parts so i will respond with that in mind! also ig i’ll just call you genshin anon now if that’s okay <3

(whoo the genshin anon again from the other day lol) .... i didn't even realize those mushroom were in mondtstadt oh my gosh. googled their location and wow have i been missing oUT lol. there's so many more than i thought there were. idk the oceanid isn't too terrible. not my favorite but still isn't the worst (in my opinion) to do. ahh yeah i can see that with sucrose. i.. don't particularly plan that well so maybe that's why she won't fit in my team lol.(1/4)

(3/4) the friendships are kind of annoying. like you don't really get anything from them? just a namecard and their story. wish they did more like giving you more of a chance to make their special dish or when you use their talents they have a higher chance to work (like where they have a chance to make a second of a dish or item etc). idk i just feel like they could add more to it? yeah only 4 polearm users ): i think rosaria is going to be polearm? i pulled the skyward spine long before i had

(4/4) anyone to use a polearm. ugh yeah i get so many claymores from the banner. yeah it's kind of annoying to have to plan out what to do like that. like today i need so many materials from the domains since like everything i use is todays materials, but i want to get boss items to level up and artifacts and just ugh let me do what i want lol. wish the resin could get tweaked some. yeah noelle. ditched her once i had other characters lol.

yeah one of my fears is that one of the materials that’s actually hard to get (like the violets on the cliffsides or whatever) is gonna be an ascension material like ajkdfl so it’s worth collecting literally EVERYTHING u see while exploring. i just dislike how long the oceanid takes like you can’t really power through it like the other bosses you HAVE to sit through each stage -_- like when the platforms drop ur literally just standing there lmao

ooo yeah albedo was kind of another character whose banner i just sat through lmao. but speaking of albedo and zhongli i REALLY like their english voices i normally have japanese voices on but if i ever get them they’re gonna be on my “english voices team” jfdalkfsd i remember when i was doing their story quests i had english voices on just to hear them talk. albedo does have a really interesting story tho i hope it gets developed more in the future!

and i actually did go back to the spiral abyss after we talked about it LMAO omg but yeah floor 7 fucking sucks bc once those fatui agents have their shield up or whatever they take forever to beat if you don’t have the right elements. that being said i made it to the tenth floor lmao yippee but yeah don’t have that many stars on floor 7

true there’s literally no real incentive to maxing friendship like afkdlj i wish the rewards were primogems or something actually of value bc the namecards definitely. aren’t really worth it at all lmao. or like you said some sort of bonus to their talents/elemental skills/bursts or whatever. kinda like pokemon where when you max friendship your pokemon can like “tough it out” and stuff lmao.

maybe that’s something they’ll add in the future like ascending a character to a certain level also didn’t use to give us anything but now some of them gives you a bunch of rewards.

yeah from some supposed leaks i saw that she was a polearm. interestingly enough i saw people point out that she fights like a claymore user tho and there’s some suspicions that she was a claymore user but then they went “we don’t have enough polearms” and then made her a polearm lmaoo

and yeah with the resin you basically have to dedicate your day to one thing and one thing only lmao. i wish there was a better way to farm resin because right now you can only really get it through rewards and stuff :/ i get that with free games like this they can’t give you EVERYTHING otherwise there wouldn’t be an incentive to play every day but ya know

lmao noelle her and amber really are the two everyone ditches once they get more characters jaflskdjadsf

Genshin Impact

Breath of the Wild was a game I wanted to love. I love the Zelda games, always have, and I eat up open world games like candy. Yet, BoTW has sat on my digital shelf collecting digital dust for ages. Why is that? Well, to put it simply, I don't want to play as Link. BoTW has a beautiful world, rich combat and game play puzzles, tons to see and do and experience, it's a sandbox for the ages. But it's hampered so heavily for me by the fact that I have to play this very boring and to be honest kind of forgettable boy named Link during the game play. That may sound petty, but if I'm in an open world game I want to fully immerse myself into that and video games are where we all go to escape anyway. If I wanted to be misgendered, I'd simply forget to shave and go outside.

I don't mind playing other Zelda games because in those, Link is a self contained character in the world and they're relatively short and self contained games. But BoTW is a sandbox. And for a large majority of it, you're not going to be doing the story or being addressed as link. The size of the world and the sheer amount of hours you're going to put into it mean that for almost all intents and purposes, Link isn't Link, he's a faceless avatar that you're supposed to put yourself into. The game offers so much freedom in so many avenues and yet, in your choice of how to explore the world as someone you'd actually like to be, you're not allowed. You have to be a skinny blonde twink.

So, in late 2019, in comes a trailer for Genshin Impact. It's making its rounds on the Internet as a "PC Free to Play Gacha Breath of the Wild Clone" which, while a mouthful, was something I initially wrote off. Didn't see a point in checking it out, as I really don't like Gacha games very much. But in late September 2020, MiHoYo the developers released the public 1.0 build of the game to everyone. Multi-platform, too. iOS/Android, PC, PS4, and even a switch release down the line. And maybe its the pandemic, or maybe the Internet was simply too lured in by the cute anime girls, but it took the many by storm. It took me personally over 12+ hours to download the 11 gigs of the game because the servers were so swamped with people.

Now I do want to be clear: Genshin Impact borrows many things from BoTW, but it isn't a clone. It's not a sandbox in the same way BoTW is and aside from some general game play things such as gliders, stamina/wall climbing system, and general aesthetic, the games are massively different. Still, though, playing it has highlighted to me why I never felt quite right playing BoTW, and its that lack of freedom. That lack of ability to play the game on my own terms and explore the beautiful handcrafted world the way I want to. 

Despite appearances, Genshin Impact is a lot more like a single player MMO than it is anything else. Requiring tons of farming and grinding to create high level powerful characters in a world that gets increasingly more powerful and hostile as you do. The core game play loop of Genshin Impact is pretty phenomenal, essentially giving you a massive world to explore with literally thousands upon thousands of chests and rewards to find. Either by clearing out enemies, doing random in world puzzles, or even just sitting around. Being inside of and exploring the world of Teyvat is as rewarding as it is beautiful. The art and animation design of the game are stellar and do a lot to make you forget how much time has passed since you booted up the game in the first place. There's tons of different lore books to find, NPC's to talk to, quests to complete, the world is chock-full of lore and world building even down to simple weapon and material descriptions. Teyvat is a wonderful place to be and the developers MiHoYo deserve a pat on the back for how good the world of Genshin Impact is. The other side of game play is a simple system of Character Progression where you farm materials to make your characters/weapons/abilities better so that you can farm even more materials from harder enemies, much like an MMO, and you also acquire gear called Artifacts with randomly rolled stats much like an ARPG. In that regard, Genshin Impact is highly addictive. There are a myriad of weapons, talents, artifacts, and characters all to level up and build up over the course of your play, and every character can be made viable very very easily. The game also lets you keep a party of 4 characters that you can swap between at any point, as well as each character being attuned to a specific Elemental Type that reacts to other Elements. This causes the end-game to be centered around doing some of the hardest dungeons the game has to offer by theory crafting incredibly powerful teams that work off of each other and cause Elemental Reactions in enemies. It’s some of the most fun i’ve had in a game in ages.

All of that is fantastic but unfortunately its all also held back by one simple, huge problem: Original Resin. The game uses a currency called Original Resin that you use to challenge the harder content in the game. Dungeons, World Bosses, Elite Weekly Bosses, you name it and if its end-game content, it likely costs Resin. And not in insignificant amounts either. Dungeons are 20, Bosses are 40, and Weekly Bosses are 60. So, how do you obtain this material? Time. You start with, and are capped, at 120(Later 160 in patch 1.1). 1 resin takes 8 minutes to get back. If you spend it all, it takes 16 hours to get back. Given the rates you spend it, you can go from 120 to 0 in roughly 10-15 minutes. With no way to increase the resin cap, and the incredibly slow acquisition rate, that frequently means you only have about that much playtime a day of the game in the endgame. And that's, needless to say, incredibly frustrating. Thankfully its not an entire stamina system that means you can't play the game at all when you're out of resin, but it does mean that character progression itself is gated as all upgrade/progression materials are locked behind these dungeons and bosses that you must use Original Resin to face. Effecitvely, this means single characters will become weeks and weeks of work, with weapons and artifacts being only slightly less time consuming. I can only hope MiHoYo is looking to change this system in a way that isn't just increasing the cap as the feedback they've received has been very negative regarding it, but only time will tell.

Unfortunately, this isn't the games only problem with its players either. The game is a Gacha, there is no getting around that, but despite the fact that pretty much any character can become massively overpowered and viable in the endgame, people are going to want the rarest characters that exist. This is by design and unfortunately is more or less a glorified gambling system. And while the game is quite nice with its premium currency and how often it gives it, what isn't nice is that the rarest “5-star”characters cost a minimum of 200$ to get through money. With no guarantee you're getting the one you want.

Worse still, outside of a guaranteed 5-star drop at 90 rolls on the gacha wheel, the chance for a 5-star weapon or character is 0.6%. Not even a whole rounded up 1%. This is frankly ridiculous, as is the cost of real money to premium currency. For reference, most other popular Gacha’s doing well offer their rarest characters at anywhere between a 1-6% rate. In general, gacha's aren't known to be kind in their rates. That’s the point, they want you to gamble with real money. Genshin Impact, however, is so unkind and unfair that even other regular players of gacha gamers are very, very vocally upset. If it wasn't for the game play loop and the world, I'm not sure this would fly. And its certainly not flying in the west with the crowd that doesn't play Gacha's nearly as much. Neither is the resin system, as gamers in the west typically want to play for hours and hours at a time.

I’d be remiss if i didn’t bring up the story in Genshin Impact, as it’s genuinely fantastic. As previously stated, the world has a metric tonne of hidden lore in books, weapon/item/artifact descriptions, character stories you unlock as you use a playable character, etc. But the main story you can currently play from start to finish in the 1.0 release is the prologue.

This prologue stars very simply: Your character, the “Traveler” is an alien from another world. Not much is known about them so far, other than that the Traveler and their sibling were people with the ability to hop between worlds at will. In the opening moments of the game this power, along with your sibling, are stolen from you by an unnamed assailant. Thus trapping you in Teyvat and leaving you to begin a journey to find the Seven Gods of Teyvat, simply known as “The Seven” and seek their power and wisdom to find your sibling and potentially leave. This journey is how you meet Venti, one of the Seven in disguise as a simple human bard, and his best friend Dvalin. The events that follow have you help this strange bard, as well as the people of Mondstat, defeat the dragon Dvalin. Previously, he protected the lands of Mondstat for hundreds of years. However, as you meet both Dvalin and Venti, he has had his mind corrupted and been lied to by an order of evil mages known as the Abyss Order, and its caused him to go on the offensive against Mondstat and her people.

It's a fair bit emotional, humorous at times thanks to Venti, and overall very engaging. Mondstat is a city built on freedom, to the point that its own god Barbatos(Venti) refuses to rule over it and allows himself to be the weakest of the seven gods, as that would take away some of the cities freedom. Within this prologue, there is a huge focus on Mondstat being a city of Freedom, the prologue quite literally ends with Venti telling Dvalin after you have saved him from the corruption that even though he is "meant" to be the protector of Mondstat, he hopes Dvalin chooses whatever life he wants, even if that's not Mondstats protector, and that Venti simply wants him to be happy. Venti's own personal story quest goes further in depth about the foundation of Mondstat and its origins as a rebel city founded after the citizens overthrew the oppressive rule of an awful tyrant God and killed him. In a very pretty hand drawn "cathedral window" style cutscene, you get to see the end of this war and why Barbatos chose the form he currently inhabits and took up being a bard, which was to honor a dead friend from this very same war. This explains why Mondstat and Barbatos value its freedom so highly. I cried at this moment both times I played it.

For a free game, the storytelling here is off the charts. As i said before, Venti and many other characters have personal stories that both introduce you to a trial version of the playable character, thus letting you see how they work and play, and also giving you either more info on the world or an introduction to the character in question, or both. They're fantastic little stories and are up there with the main story in quality. One of my favorite parts of the game and something that will only be expanded with time. Each one takes you on a journey of discovery or even simple fun with a character and it all feels very personal and touching, as all of the main stories and character quests are very well voice acted.

The prologue being so focused on freedom makes it all the more awkward, then, that MiHoYo is a game developer based out of China, and as such has to follow China's censorship rules. Taiwan and Hong Kong both are censored in-game chat and if you're reported for saying them, you'll be banned for daring to speak the words. These aren't the only censorship decisions in the game, but they're by far the ones that struck me the most. I understand that the company is based out of China and thus has to follow the censorship rules, as they are the actual law of the land and they could be fined or even shut down if they refused. But the disconnect of knowing there are actual human rights atrocities being committed in China with the Uygher Genocide and Re-Education camps, the human rights violations in Hong Kong, the breakdown of democracy and the treatment of Taiwan, while this game that comes out of China boasts on and on about Freedom and the Human right to self actualize and choose their future is... troubling. It's one that I don't really know how to reconcile, if it can be reconciled at all. I'd like to believe that the developers really believe in their own story and secretly oppose those sorts of atrocities. But at the same time, banning players who mention Hong Kong or Taiwan isn't in the law. That’s a decision MiHoYo is making. Right now, China doesn’t have the freedom that Venti and Mondstat and Genshin Impact try to instill in you so hard as important and a human right. And knowing that and knowing the censorship is in the game make it very difficult to get a read on what the game actually wants you to feel.

Overall,i think Genshin Impact is a fantastic game. Its updates plan to bring in not only more story, as there are meant to be 7 Acts and currently the game features the Prologue and half of Act 1, but in those acts it plans to explain the playable areas and bring in new Events, Characters, Weapons, etc. And that makes me excited for the future of Genshin Impact! It’s a beautiful game of genuinely Triple AAA quality completely for free. But. Its also a Gacha game and by far one of the least rewarding Gachas you could play right now. Maybe that will change with time. I certainly hope it does. But it feels hard to recommend something that, once you beat it, disrespects your time so much and so badly. I hope Genshin Impact has a bright future, I really do, and I’m definitely going to continue playing it. But right now, I can’t say for certain that I feel confident in the developers to make it the game it clearly wants to be if it wasn’t shackled down by its Gacha.

History of the Creed - Part 2: Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood

Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood; the game that is a mission packed sequel and is somehow better than its predecessor… at least that’s how I think… and many other people.

ASSASSIN’S CREED: BROTHERHOOD (The original PC release in Europe: March 18, 2011)

PLOT

We begin our story where the last game ended up. Ezio just beat up the Pope and received a message that doesn’t understand because it’s for Desmond. So he comes back to Mushroom Ki- I mean his villa to finally take a rest from the Templars. Shame it was a bad idea, since Rodrigo’s son, manchild that he is, decided to wreck our shit with his papal army and, to add more salt to injury, kill uncle Mario. I HAVE WASTED DOZENS OF HOURS AND TENS OF THOUSANDS OF FLORINS TO MAKE THIS TOWN NOT LOOK LIKE SHIT! CESARE!! YOU SPANISH FU-

Technical difficulties

What we basically have is a repeat of the previous game: Family member of Borgias ends up ruining Ezio’s life in some way and killing his family member(s) so it’s time to whoop some ass in the old fashioned revenge. I mean it’s not bad but it’s kinda weak to have a story that its foundations are basically the same as the AC2.

Good thing that the characters save the story. Ezio is still awesome as he was in the previous game. Almost all of the secondary protagonists are from AC2 and their characterization is extended in some way (I might also want to add up that even Rodrigo somewhat changed after our last meeting). The new characters (both protagonists and antagonists [asides from Cesare]) are on the same level as the secondary characters in the previous game: nothing great, nothing terrible, just fine. Main villain on the other hand… is basically a large ham. And I fucking love it. It’s the kind of ham that is enjoyable to watch. And the main reason why Cesare is so hilariously enjoyable to watch is his voice actor. Andreas Apergis fucking nails it! He already showed some talent in Assassin’s Creed 2 as Francesco de’ Pazzi and Checco Orsi but this game is when he showed of his talent. The fact that he ended up as a main villain in modern times and as your closest companion in the newest game proves this.

GAMEPLAY

So this game is basically the same as Assassin’s Creed 2 but with few changes. While the parkour is still the same as it was before, the combat got some new stuff. For instance there are kill streaks now. How does it work? After killing an enemy you can aim at the next target and attack them, or in other words, kill them in one shot kill. Also there is a kick. You can kick the enemy in the nuts to make them vulnerable for your attacks.

You thought combat was too easy in the previous game? Well, with this two new addons the enemies are now a complete joke. Even the toughest bastards asides from Borgia captains and bosses will die like a little bitch once you smash their balls off and/or kill streak them.

Speaking off enemies, there are two new types of them. There are Papal Guards who are the amalgamation of all previous enemies. In theory, they are very tough. In practice, kick ‘em in the nuts and they are done. There are also previously mentioned Borgia Captains who will either run away on your sight or fight you, which, in latter’s case, are immune to counters and kill streaks.

…

Oh yeah, you can also hold attack button to do a special attack based on what you have in your hand. That (mostly) useless shit exists.

There is also some upgrades to your arsenal. You can fire your hidden gun much faster. You can fire poison through the shootable darts (when you buy it out from Leonardo). You can use heavy weapons like the ones used by brutes (when you buy heavy sheath). And of course, the god’s gift: The crossbow.

heavenly noises

Imagine your hidden pistol being silent and have up to over twice the ammo. That’s crossbow in the nutshell. Overpowered? Yes, but still satisfying to use. It may cost a fuck ton of florins but it’s worth a price.

Also, you have your assassin apprentices that you can summon to help you kill selected target or kill a group of soldiers with arrows when you have three, filled bars.

Are you sick of walking around the whole 16th century Rome? Well, now you can use tunnels to get faster (providing you renovated them).

There are new mechanics for horses like shooting/assassinating from a horse and stealing a horse GTA style. Oh, and you can also whistle to summon it; I forgot about that.

…

Huh… I believe I said probably everything about new gameplay mechanics.

OH WAIT! That’s right! The beggars are back! Along with bards!! AND THEY MULTIPLIED!!! Thank god for the ability to throw your money to distract them for a while.

Liquid Bogan: M̶u̵l̵t̴i̶p̵l̵a̷y̶e̵r̵.̴

What?

Liquid Bogan: T̵h̵e̵r̷e̸ ̵i̸s̷ ̶a̶l̴s̷o̶ ̶m̵u̸l̸t̸i̴p̸l̵a̵y̶e̶r̴.̷ ̶Y̶o̴u̴ ̴f̷o̸r̶g̵o̵t̴ ̷a̷b̴o̵u̵t̸ ̸i̸t̷,̶ ̷y̵i̸s̵?̵

…

What?

ACTIVITIES

Well it wouldn’t be an Ubisoft game without a fuck ton of side stuff to do, so I’ll try to focus on new things.

While renovations are back, you won’t be able to renovate the building unless you kill the Borgia captain in the region and then burn previously protected Borgia tower. There are also banks spread around Rome so you don’t have to go to one place to withdraw your money like in the previous game.

I mentioned earlier about the apprentices. You can recruit them by helping civilians when they are in danger just like AC1. In return they will join the brotherhood and you can then send them to different cities to level them up to level 10.

Now you can do challenges for mercenaries, courtesans, thieves and assassins. By doing them you can unlock stuff like (respectively) 50% discount for hiring guild members, 2 new abilities per guild and (and this is the only bonus from assassins) a new, powerful weapon. Personally they are fine but some of them are really annoying and tedious (10 times five people kill streak anyone?!).

Beside challenges, there are side missions, like, a fuck ton of them. We have assignments from thieves and courtesans and assassination contracts that unlock as you go further through the main plot. We have Leonardo’s war machines to destroy, which after doing all of them you will be rewarded with parachutes. We have missions focusing on Templar agents AKA characters from multiplayer. We have Christina missions that unlock every 15% of synchronization up to 75%. There are also 2 DLC packs that are free for PC users: The Da Vinci Disappearance and (since 2017 to my surprise) Copernicus Conspiracy.

Did you liked collecting the flags from AC1? Well guess what? They are back. And this time you can buy expensive as fuck maps after collecting 25 of them.

And now… we came to the big one: Full Synchronization. Basically, most of the memories (either main ones or secondary ones) has additional, secondary objective like not doing this thing, killing someone with specific weapon, don’t kill anyone etc. Personally, I have a mixed feelings about it. On one hand, it’s cool to give the game some additional challenge. On the other hand, it feels like it restricts the players (and to be more precise, completionists) from playing how they want. Not to mention, some of these objective are very annoying/hard to get (anybody wants some no detection task?!). Don’t like them? Tough shit! We will have to withstand it for… let me see- 7 GAMES AT LEAST!

Also there are 5 hidden artifacts on modern times. Might want to point it out.

But overall, most of these activities were enjoyable to do. Then again, I think I’m some kind of masochist that enjoys doing that. At least I can say that most of them are worth the award.

THE GRAHPICS AND SOUND

The graphics might be where this game has the biggest advantage over AC2. While the buildings and the rest of environment feels like it’s on the same level as the last game, the character models doesn’t give you a feeling of being outdated anymore (at least in 50-70%): textures look sharper, facial animation looks less wonky/over the top, it all looks really nice… except there is one noticeable problem with some of the animations. Whenever you kill someone with your hidden blade, their forearms doesn’t animate, so it feels like you stabbed a dummy with the inflatable arms. Did some of the animators forgot to add the animation?

The sound effects keep the same level as the previous game AKA very good and the soundtrack is still top-notch. Jesper Kyd once again made a damn good job on the latter’s department. When you compare both soundtracks from AC2 and ACB you’ll notice that the latter one (most of the time) has more aggressive/unpleasant experience, which makes sense, you are in the lion’s den which is Italian Templars’ main base, that ain’t Florence/Venice, that’s home of our main villain. Here are some of my favorite tracks:

And here is the entire soundtrack for you to hear.

STABILITY

Note: Played on the highest setting minus anti-aliasing.

Good news – there were no crashing bugs, nor game breaking bugs.

Bad news – there were more framerate drops this time (especially when it was raining).

So still, the PC version is nicely optimized with a few hiccups. Something tells me I should say more about it but honestly, there is nothing else to add.

SUMMARY

Same foundations for the plot that makes it somewhat boring? Yes. Too much annoying stuff to do? Kind of. Being nothing more but a reheated, mission-packed sequel? Absolutely. But still, this game is the best out of all of Ezio’s trilogy and I would say that even if the boomer fan pointed a gun on my head. It basically takes AC2 but it adds so much stuff that makes the previous game pale in comparison.

And now, the only way to finish this review… is with this:

Cesare, oh Cesare,

A man of great depravity

Believed himself immortal 'til

He had a date with gravity.

intensive clapping

See you all next time.

Bye!

Chapter 2

A Bit About the Incident

“Magic beanstalk,” the boy said as if to explain it all. “Old man sold me the beans.” “Ah. Of course. Why didn’t I think of that.”

The human’s name had been Jack. If one was to ask any given resident of the Cloud Island of Mielle, one would hear a story about how that resident’s sister worked for a jeweler who was married to a peach farmer whose great grandmother had seen five humans in her time. There were the gold and black-clad merchants who traveled down to the human cities, their rocs carrying down baskets of blue Heavenly Apples and fabric woven from crystallized sunbeam and returning with furs, minerals and meat on slabs of ice. But the masked merchants were a society unto themselves, as secretive and closed off from the citizens of Mielle as the were to their wealthy human customers below. But for one of the Sky Folk outside of that profession to see a human in the flesh was rare indeed. There were laws on the books forbidding it, supposedly the result of conflicts and non-aggression treaties too old for anyone to remember, but they were seen as artifacts. It was like declaring it illegal for the moon to fall from the sky. The merchants searched their wares for stowaways with the same care they examined marbled meat. For reasons nobody quite understood, the rocs apparently wouldn’t listen to humans who tried to tame them the way Sky Folk pilots had. Unless humans learned how to fly, they couldn’t access the soft, gray terrain of the Cloud Islands which drifted lazily over the water and terrain of the Center of the Universe where the diminutive beings lived. So Ezra thought of humans the way most of his kind did-not much at all, except as a distant source of goods found only on the land. Certainly he had dreams of attaining the heights of fame to match elder Kettles of the past, masters at their craft who were said to have made wedding cakes for empresses and the nearly impossible 40 Blackbird Pie for human kings. (Humans had those sorts of ranks, he’d been told.) But he wouldn’t meet those empresses or kings. It just wasn’t done. Besides, he had enough to worry about on a daily basis. He could not be sure he heard whispers and saw heads shaking in pity in the corner of his vision when he walked around the circular market to pick up flour and sugar, but he’d grown so used to them that perceived them almost constantly. Once in a while he’d walk past a conversation between a tailor wearing her brightly-clad goods and a tinkerer, and over the bang of pots and swish of translucent satin he’d hear snatches of “…grandmother told me their works were quite impressive” and “really a shame, but it let it be a lesson to you, I say.” They would avoid eye contact as he passed by. That was to be expected, he would tell himself, and hold his head at a proper angle while being sure not to spill a single drop of milk or grain of flour. The Kettle name was no longer respectable, and the man to whom he was indentured was. So anything Ezra did would be attributed to the moral decline of past generations; Hamilton Tooth was merely ‘unpleasant, but one cannot ignore his talent,’ as many would say. Tooth was the one who sold the glazed fruit tarts and wedding cakes now, though for a less grand audience. Ezra was not making a wedding cake the fateful night he opened the door for the human. He was working late into the night, hair tied back and face splotched with flour, kneading wheat dough to be baked in the morning. His master had thrown out the last batch in a drunken rage, declaring it ‘sour’ without even looking at it. Hamilton Tooth’s snoring still sent the walls shaking, and Ezra did his best to ignore it. No matter how far gone Master Tooth might have been in dreamland listening to that damned harp, he’d always manage to wake up at the worst moment and blame his apprentice for it. So loud was the snoring that Ezra almost didn’t hear the faint, hoarse call right outside the door. All he could make out was ‘let me in!’ Letting the dough fall to the flour-covered table and wiping his hands off on his apron, Ezra stood up to listen. There it was again, plaintive and exhausted. Was that person in danger? And if they were, why would they go to a bakery? Hesitantly, Ezra opened the front door a crack. He winced at the groan of the wood, but Master Tooth remained asleep. “I’m afraid we’re closed at this hour,” he whispered. “But you can…hello?” There was nobody there. Not in front of him, at least; the town was as dead as one might expect it to be so close to midnight, the only light coming from the full moon and a few candle-lit windows. Ezra let out a breath and scowled. “I’m being pranked again,” he muttered. “Some brat’s probably going to steal a pie from the windowsill. Which means…” Something ran past Ezra, something that reached just past his thigh and about to his waist. At first Ezra thought it might have been a small child, but the thing moved far too quickly for a toddler’s wobbly gait and the shape was all wrong. It certainly wasn’t a large vulture, even if the tattered cloak it wore suggested it. Ezra shut the door behind him and grabbed a candle, holding it up to try to find the thing. “…Hello? Who are you? Whatever you are, you can’t be here!” A bundle of rags in the corner moved and slowly emerged. As the first layer of rags fell away, it became apparent that he was looking at a very small person with black hair and freckled skin, thin and underfed-looking. They barely moved, gawking up at Ezra. While Ezra couldn’t discern the being’s gender, their proportions suggested someone a few years younger than Ezra himself. “You’re a human, aren’t you.” It sounded ridiculous the moment he spoke the words, yet he knew immediately what he was seeing. Ezra very slowly knelt down onto one knee in order to better address the intruder face to face, realizing he probably loomed in comparison. “There, is this better?” The human slowly nodded and took a step closer. The voice that came out sounded male and young, hoarse and exhausted. “You’re all so big.” “I know what it’s like to be loomed over.” Ezra was on the short side; Master Tooth most definitely was not. “But you can’t be here. I mean, you really can’t! How did you even get up here? You didn’t steal away in a roc basket, did you? It’s just…this is unprecedented.” The boy shook his head, still reluctant to get any closer. “Climbed a beanstalk, sir.” “A…beanstalk?” There were beanstalks climbing through gardens throughout the Island. They were bigger than the kind that grew on the land, but not by that much. “Magic beanstalk,” the boy said as if to explain it all. “Old man sold me the beans.” “Ah. Of course. Why didn’t I think of that.” Ezra rubbed his temples, trying not to dwell on the implication that humans could apparently grow ladders to the heavens out of plants. “Well, you’re here either way. This is…really pretty incredible. A human…! I don’t suppose you have any recipes you wish to share from the Center of the Universe?” “The Center of the…What?” “Nevermind. I just thought I’d ask. I’m a cook. Ezra Kettle.” Ezra extended a hand for a handshake, then remembered he had to crouch down again for it to be of any use to the boy. The human shook several of his fingers awkwardly. “You’re not going to cook me, are you…?” “…Cook you!?” Ezra remembered the fateful snoring of the Walking Mountain himself down the hall and covered his mouth, repeating himself in a more hushed tone. “Cook you, lad? What sort of creatures do you take us for? We don’t eat humans! You’re intelligent and you’ve got…a face. I mean cows do too, but it’s not the same. What’s your name?” The ragged boy shuffled his feet. “Jack. I’m Jack Nimble.” “Jack.” Ezra stood up again and started pacing, giving a worried glance down the hall. “Look. My boss, well, my Master is asleep right now after having drained half the wine stores as usual. If he wakes up and see you, I can’t guarantee he wouldn’t try to bake you in a pie or turn you into bread filling out of sheer sport. I’ve got to put up with him until my family’s debts are paid, but there’s no need for a human to…” He squinted at Jack, noticing the boy’s hollow cheeks. Sighing, he reached onto a rack and pulled out one of the golden egg custard tarts that hadn’t sold the day before. It was small enough to fit in the palm of Ezra’s chubby hand, its metallic sheen and sugary glaze glinting in the moonlight, but Jack took it eagerly with both hands. He stared up at Ezra in wonder. “I can eat it, sir? I mean…is this food?” Ezra rolled his eyes. “Yes, of course! Consider it a free sample.” He sat down at the table and sighed, glancing alternately between the lump of bread dough and Jack eating the tart as if it were a king’s feast. Had it been his own recipe, Ezra thought, Jack would be brought to joyful tears with one taste; then again, he reminded himself, the very hungry rarely had discerning palates. “Listen, Master Nimble. I’m serious when I say you can’t be found when my master wakes up. I’ll give you someplace to sleep nice and hidden, and in the morning I’ll tell him I need to pick something up from the market and bring you to the constables. They’ll send you home with one of the merchants and take care of that beanstalk thing.” “Won’t be necessary, sir. I can climb back down on my own.” Jack had already finished off half the tart, though he was starting to slow. “Never had something like this! Is there really gold in it? Do giants eat gold?” “Shh, keep your voice down! It’s…well, the goose lays eggs like that. I don’t think there’s really gold in it. The yolks just look gold and taste sweet on their own. Nobody bred Golden Egg Geese like the Kettle line.” Ezra held his nose up proudly for just a moment before a thundering snore reminded him of his situation. “Well, we did, anyway.” There was no need to explain the technicalities of family debts to a human boy who had bigger problems to deal with. “Did you lose your geese?” “We lost our fortune. It’s a long story and I won’t burden you with it. Everything in the Kettle name belongs to Hamilton Tooth now, including my foreseeable future ‘til I work off those debts. But never you mind that. I’m learning the craft and I’m more than well fed as you can see; would be petty of me to wish for more.” Ezra imagined the more he told himself that, the less resentful he’d feel. “And whatever kind of person Master Tooth is, he’s talented and productive. So the rest doesn’t really matter, or shouldn’t…” Jack licked the last of the tart off his fingers and leaned back against the cupboard, sighing and looking distant. “We lost our cow. We lost everything else too, but I really loved that cow…” Ezra felt shame burning his cheeks. “See? This is what I mean! You don’t need me burdening you with my problems. But-but think of it this way. You can go back down and brag that you were able to reach the Sky Islands on your own. Get some of the beans growing off that beanstalk and sell ‘em and make yourself rich. There’s plenty of glory to be found for you now! Just…not here in this miser’s house. I wouldn’t trust him not to do something awful and…” He shuddered, imagining Tooth looming like a hairy old mountain over poor Jack. “You need anything else to eat? I know you’re small, but it was just one egg tart…” Jack shook his head. “If I eat more I’ll be too sleepy. Don’t like staying still long.” “Well, you moved fast enough to sneak into Hamilton Tooth’s bakery. That’s something. He catches birds that sneak in with glue traps and has me bake ‘em in pies. He’d be spitting mad if he found out I let you in.” Ezra caught himself smiling despite himself (and the misfortune he’d face should just that event occur) and cleared his throat. “Fair enough. I’ll just let you rest in the supply closet. Sun and Moon know he never sets a foot in there if he can send me instead to…” He fell silent as the dulcet tones of a soft, androgynous voice echoed from Tooth’s room. The harp was awake again, singing its wordless, discordant song that fell somewhere between a voice and the pluck of strings. Ezra shuddered; he hated the way it sounded. “Just ignore that damned thing. Master Tooth doesn’t believe me when I say it turns on by itself, but you hear it. At least it’ll keep my master out better than the wine will…” But Jack wasn’t listening to Ezra. He was standing up alert, staring off in the direction of the song. “What is that, sir?” “It’s a harp. Just a harp. Apparently that’s one of his family’s heirlooms. It’s got some kind of mechanism that causes it to play and sing on its own. Damned if I know how it works but I’m no tinker. Ghastly awful thing with this grinning face, but that overgrown lout can’t get enough of the stupid toy. Claims it makes the wine taste sweeter and the money shine brighter or something.” Ezra spoke quickly, unnerved as always by that damned song. “As if having money isn’t enough! But this is a fine chance to get you into the closet; he won’t hear me shuffling around here over that Moon-damned noise. Jack, are you listening?” Jack had a glazed-over look in his eyes, and Ezra told himself it was just from eating too much sugar on an empty stomach. The human boy nodded up at Ezra, who led him into the supply closet and hid him behind bags of salt and flour. He was eerily complacent; perhaps, Ezra thought, the boy was just exhausted after his ordeal. “Just be sure to stay still and try not to snore,” Ezra told his guest. “We’ll see about that beanstalk mess in the morning. Goodnight, Jack.” “Goodnight, Mr. Kettle.” Jack had a peaceful smile on his face, and Ezra set himself at ease. There was nothing dangerous about a human, certainly not one so young. They were just smaller people, and this one had enough problems to deal with. And a harp, he reminded himself, was just a harp. He worked late into the night to make up for the time he’d lost, and didn’t get to sleep for another two hours. When he did he slept like the dead, not even dreaming. The next morning he woke to find the closet door open, with both Jack and Master Tooth nowhere to be seen. The back door was hanging off its hinges and the garden had been trampled, footsteps digging into the soft, grey cloud terrain and stomping rotten blue apples into mush. The hutch where the Golden Egg Goose lived was empty, and the harp was missing. There was already a crowd gathering behind the bakery, whispering and staring at Ezra. Within the hour the constable arrived to arrest him for aiding in the murder of Hamilton Tooth, who lay dead on the surface of the Center of the Universe near the root of an impossibly huge fallen beanstalk. (This chapter was first posted on Jukepop in January of 2015. You can learn more about the story on this tumblr’s main page. If you’re enjoying it, please RT and spread the word. And drop me a line!)

Chapter 2: Rexias and Lahar

Spireling Ymil appeared to be in a better mood than usual when he had called Rexias and Lahar to his office that morning to give them their next task. An anonymous patron had visited that morning with an unusual request. A cave had been discovered a few miles outside of Everspring’s easternmost protectorate, and the patron had it on reliable authority that a crystal ball lay in its depths, a couple centuries old at least. The patron did not disclose the reason for the request. Once Rex soon found out what it was precisely what had gotten the crime boss’s spirits up, he understood why a reason did not matter.

“One hundred fifty gold pieces each upon returning with the objective,” the half-orc said in a smooth baritone, a rare smile curling up his lips. Rex’s ears perked, fully alert. He turned to his partner, whose normally heavily lidded chestnut eyes were open wider than he’d ever seen them, almost making the elf look awake. If that was their personal cut, how much had this patron paid the spireling for the job? He silently doubled down on his policy to never pay for artifacts.

“Anything else you find in the cave is fair game, though if there is something that could prove helpful to the Clasp, know ingratiation will get you far. I know you two are smart enough to remember what happens if you try and screw us over, so there’s no need to go over that policy. Just remember that those marks of yours are there for a reason. Any questions?” The slick half-orc barely gave them a moment to answer. “Wonderful. Be prepared to leave this afternoon,”

The spireling lazily waved them out of the office, and Rex and Lahar, knowing of his capricious and particular temperament, lost no time in making their exit out of the lava chamber the crime boss called his office. They made their way through the system of tunnels underneath the city of Everspring.

“That is a hell of a lot of gold. Not that I’m complaining, but where does he get off on choosing us for this mission?” Lahar asked, keeping his voice in a low drawl as they walked through the underground market. “I thought that Ymil had it out for you somehow,”

“I guess he’s decided six months is enough time to waste keeping me on a leash,” the tiefling responded, flicking his tail on a burlap sack of a white powder on the front of a vendor’s stall. Any objections the vendor might have had were ignored as they pushed through the crowd, keeping an eye out for pickpockets who did not respect the Clasp code. 

“Perfect task for us though, huh?” the elf quipped, taking out a finely carved ivory pipe and some dried plants from a side pouch. “If we die, he gets our dumb asses off his hands. If not, he gets to buy, like, goldspun clothing or some shit,” He trailed off as he lit the pipe and inhaled deeply, closing his eyes for a moment, then exhaling an opaque blue smoke cloud.

Rex smirked. “Let’s hope the handsome devil didn’t send us on a suicide quest, then. Who knows how much he was paid up front?”

 He took the lead around the corner that turned down a less-travelled tunnel with Lahar close behind him. The path was empty save for a few floating will o’ wisps towards the curve of the ceiling serving to light their way, and they made their way down a few more lanes until they reached the bunkers, where they made up their packs for the weeklong trip. 

The spireling had sent one of his lackeys with directions written down on a scrap of yellowed parchment. The lackey, a familiar scrawny purple-haired human they knew as René, was waiting in the outer tunnel that led into the farmlands. He looked almost envious as he handed the paper over, but sent them off just as amiably as usual.

“Once you return, I’ll be expecting that courier’s tip from you,” he said, pretending to inspect his fingernails as he judged their reactions. There was no way the spireling would have told anyone outside of the mission, but René had a way of knowing things regardless. How he had gained the trust of the spireling was a mystery to Rex and Lahar alike. 

“In your dreams,” Rex grinned. The two bowed slightly to each other while each placing a closed hand over their chest in the common Everspring salutation. René picked up his torch as he walked away from the pair down the tunnel, leaving a flickering shadow that stretched and soon faded into nothing.

The ancient lava tunnel system in which the entirety of the Clasp operated existed underneath the very feet of Everspring’s population. These tunnels had been historically disputed. The earliest people of the area had once lived entirely underground, virtually unnoticed as the deities and arcanists raged in the Calamity. Once the world quieted, the settlement that would later be known as Everspring was built aboveground. Much of Everspring’s history was deeply entwined with the tunnels. However, the growing weight of the city took its toll on the tunnels, and eventually most of the system fell into disuse in the face of structural collapse. The Clasp moved in soon after the condemnation, building up what they referred to playfully as the Black Market, and had secured the tunnels (“Netherspring,” as some of them had dubbed it) for the past eighty years or so.

It was from these tunnels that the two Clasp members emerged, propping open an innocuous hatch that opened up to a flax storage barn. The harvest of the year had not yet been collected, and the barn currently housed pieces of equipment in various states of repair. No one was currently in the barn, Lahar noted, and motioned to Rex to follow him up the ladder and out of the tunnel. 

The tunnel out of the city had taken them past the first hill surrounding the city. A major reason the Clasp valued their hold on Netherspring was because of this particular tunnel, which obscured their movements over land from the curious eyes of the Everspring Guard. Normally, smuggled goods (oloore root and Sannish were the most popular) were handled through ships at the Sea Port. The need occasionally rose to transport inland, and the tunnel was the best means of doing so. It also gave them the advantage against the Myriad, who had been unable to establish a firm trade in the city due to the competition. From the barn the thieves walked inconspicuously to the Shambling Path, heading east to the protectorate of Phandolin.

The countryside of Everspring crested gradually downward, showing off the rolling expanse of farmland that existed outside the walls of the city. Purple fields of flax and saffron gradually blended into the greens of wheat and grapevines, and the landscape itself seemed to ripple as breezes combed through the scenery. The late afternoon skies still recovered from last night’s rain, and a few grey clouds hung onto the otherwise clear blue canvas. The walk was perfect for tourists who would swarm the city like bees at peak season.

The fields stretched on for a few hours before the hills to the south stopped rolling and jutted sharply into sheer rock faces, a formation which was known collectively as the Virage. The hills to the north had changed from agricultural land to the forest of the Verdant Expanse. By twilight, the Virage crested low, and the untamed Mornset Countryside became visible in the distance, and as the sun dipped below the horizon Lahar suggested bedding down along the treeline for the night. 

----

It had been four days on the road at this point, more than halfway to their destination. The past hour had dealt them an ill-tempered hydra, which had put them both in a bad way before Rex managed to incinerate it. Lahar’s survivalist magic had kept them alive, but to recover properly they were forced to make camp earlier than anticipated.

The campsite was minimalistic that evening as they only bothered to set up the tent and find a water source. Rations would have to do for the night; hunting and foraging was too much of an effort, and hydras were inedible much to their disappointment. Dark skies had threatened rain all day and the tension in the air alluded to something more impressive than a drizzle. The tent was pitched a few yards inside the forest, underneath a short but sturdy-looking oak at the top of a slope. They set up quickly and crawled through the canvas flaps just as the first drops began to fall.

“How’s the bite?” Rex asked his ranger companion, who had thrown himself onto his bedroll almost immediately after entering the tent.

Lahar groaned, wiggling off the rest of his armor to assess the hip wound properly. “It sucks. Nothing I won’t be able to sleep off though,” 

The light pattering of rain on their tent suddenly crescendoed into a roar as the deluge hit. They decided to not attempt conversation and instead started in on their rations. The bacalhau from the Nixie Bazaar was worth the risk of being caught, Lahar firmly believed, and Rex had to admit that it beat the tasteless jerky the Clasp offered. 

The black-haired tiefling took out his daggers from their scabbards. Though he had managed to get the worst of it off earlier, the blades were still caked in crusty ochre-colored blood. He took out his cleaning kit and set to work. A blue-tinted opalescent fog began to fill the tent, as if Lahar was calling upon spirits as he smoked.

Rex allowed himself a momentary glance at his former protege. The elf had joined the Clasp’s forces not six months earlier, coinciding with Rex’s own return. Spireling Ymil had assigned the new member to Rex as part of his probation, a decision that he had originally not been enthused about but soon came to appreciate. Lahar proved to have an offbeat personality that instantly clicked with the rogue, and was not lacking in any natural talent for thieving either. According to himself, he had previously taken up with a few roving bands of hunters deep in the Mornset Countryside, and had developed and honed his abilities there for many years. 

As with all things dealing with the Clasp, there were a few questions that could be asked about what caused him to join. Unlike René, however, Rex never found himself needing to know everything, and never made a move to ask about Lahar’s past. To his appreciation, this favor was returned in kind, resulting in a comfortable partnership that lasted even after Lahar was branded a full-fledged Clasp member. They had been working together ever since. 

The torrential downpour had subsided to a steady rainfall when Lahar spoke up, his naturally low voice raising ever so slightly to be heard over the din. “So, this artifact. Crystal balls are supposed to scry on people, yeah? How creepy is that?”

An obsidian, infinitely reaching tower flashed across Rex’s mind. “I know I’d hate that,” he answered, taking out the oil from his kit and getting to work on the leather grips.

“But Ymil said that it also-- knew things, if you asked the right questions. Do you think it’s sentient? Like, some ancient guy fucked up somewhere and trapped himself in an orb?”

“I don’t know if you’d be able to cast a spell if your soul was trapped. At least, that’s what I remember from Lucius’s books,” 

Lucius was the exception to their silent agreement. A month ago, his older brother had interrupted them in the middle of a job. Furious at Rex for taking his gold before leaving Emon, he had come to collect with a vengeance. It was the first time Rex had ever fought together with Lahar, and he had been taken aback by how readily the elf had rushed to his aid. His brother, upon being defeated with two daggers and an arrow to his throat, had sardonically congratulated Rex for making a friend before disappearing into a cloud of sparks. 

(“I robbed my brother and he’s not happy about it,” the rogue had said by way of explanation.)

(“He probably deserved it,” the ranger had answered. And that was it on the subject.)

“Probably not sentient then,” Lahar decided. He sat back up, wincing as he was reminded of the bite mark, and began unlacing his boots. “Do you think there’s a limit to the number of questions you can ask it? Or who can ask them?”

“I don’t know,” The tiefling finished oiling the last bits of leather on the hilt and put the newly cleaned blades back into their sheaths. He paused as he mulled the questions over in his mind. 

“Maybe we should find out,” he said slowly. A slight mischievous smirk crept across his face as he turned to face his traveling companion. “Once we find it, I mean. Ask it a few questions and see what comes of it.”

Lahar took off a boot and set it aside. “I was thinking along the same lines. Might ask if you’re ever gonna be able to fuck the spireling,” 

Rex flung his dingy pillow right at Lahar’s smug expression. The offending party dodged out of the way, laughing softly, and the pillow hit the canvas behind him with a dull thud. Thunder boomed from miles away, and the rain began to pick up again, sounding like gravel pouring onto a rooftop.

“I’ll take first watch,” Rex said, abruptly changing the subject. Lahar, still looking overly proud of himself, nodded and packed up his pipe and whatever recreational substance he used, then laid down faced away from the tiefling. About ten minutes later he began to levitate, signalling that the elf had started his deep trance. 

The tiefling spent his watch figuring out his question for the crystal ball.

----

“Fuck! They keep coming?” Rex’s blades sung as they cut through one of the gelatinous oil slicks that had come to life not sixty feet into the cave. Where the dagger sliced a burble of ooze separated from the main body. Its actions seemed entirely autonomous and equally hostile.  

They had combed the forest outside Phandolin for some time looking for the entrance to the cave. Even with their perceptive talents, the rogue and ranger had taken over an hour to locate it; the map had proven to be hastily made up and nowhere near to scale. The mouth of the cave was covered by a thick, pale green epiphytic curtain which obscured most of the daylight, plunging the cavern into semidarkness. Neither had bothered with a torch, which, in retrospect, might have helped in spotting the pitch black ooze clinging to the ceiling, waiting in ambush.

“I’m sure slicing at it isn’t helping!” Lahar shouted, rapidly nocking an arrow and turning over his shoulder to release it. The tarlike entity recoiled, rearing up and forming its amoebic body into the shape of a fist. Lahar’s ears flattened and he darted just as the wave of pitch careened into the wall behind where he had been seconds before. 

“And your arrows are?” Rex retorted, shuffling backwards as the newly formed second ooze plashed forward. True, blades were proving to be detrimental, but what the fuck else could he do at the moment? 

“You have fire, right? Use it!” There was that, he supposed, but he was not too keen on taking a hit from a damn ooze. Part of the slick had stealthily started enveloping the elf’s boots, and Rex ran over to his partner to sever it from the rest of the amorphous entity. Lahar plucked another arrow from his hip quiver and, muttering an arcane phrase, sent a Hail of Thorns at the ooze. The arrow glowed a sparkling green and impacted into the creature, exploding into a ring of long, nasty, thorny protrusions. 

The pitchy ooze still clung to Lahar’s leg, and twisted around in a vortex of tar. He grunted and buckled slightly under the constriction. Out of the corner of his eye Rex saw a black wave headed toward them. It had been easy to avoid the sluggish attacks of the ooze. They had only stayed to deal with the gelatinous creature at present, rather than later.

“Ugh. Fine,”

The wave crashed into Rex, barreling him backwards several feet. A feral red heat surged through his veins, and he extended his arm forward and condensed the energy into a cone of flame. The force of the blast blew his unruly black hair flat against his head. When the fire of the Hellish Rebuke cleared, two piles of ash remained.

Behind him on the ground, cursing steadily, Lahar was kicking the ooze around his leg off. The slick, which had not seemed particularly strong to begin with, fell off after a mild beating, and Lahar scrambled backward, fumbling with his pack until he found his tinderbox. He took one of his arrows and set it alight, and plunged it into the ooze that had crawled its way forward. It caught fire and squirmed into ash, ending the encounter.

They got to their feet and stared deeper into the cave. Rex caught the echoes of guttural snarls coming from down the intersection to the right. His body felt like it had been run over by a draft horse.

“We should stop at Phandolin next,” he said.

“Agreed,” replied his companion.